


Something Like A Phenomena

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Established Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, fooling themselves that it's only sex, get there in the end, staying together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 12:32:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6610813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you make a choice. Sometimes you don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Like A Phenomena

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal in 2010.

It's dark. It's always dark when they do this. The sound of their sweat slicked skin sliding against each other the only noise in whichever quiet hotel room they find themselves in. There’s never any talking. Never any acknowledgement that this is something that they need as much as they want.

There are sometimes kisses. After a job gone wrong. Or a job gone spectacularly right.

There's the pushing of fingers, the scratching of nails, the thick press of a hard cock deep inside, shallow thrusts followed by deeper ones.

Sometimes Arthur pins Eames down, fucks him till he can't see straight. But mainly it's Arthur lying there, letting Eames do whatever he wants, begging him with his eyes to make him lose control because he'll never say the words out loud. Doesn't even know the words are there.

Sometimes they nearly get caught. Once they do. But Cobb trusts Arthur with much more than his life, shares with him more than anyone (though not everything, only Mal got that). He knows this isn't the first time (all the looks, the banter, fits so perfectly he can't believe he didn't see it before now, but he's been a little preoccupied). So he only smiles, unsurprised, and closes the door, gives them ten more minutes.

Arthur's most often the first to leave. He heads to the bathroom, scooping up his clothing as he goes. Gets dressed in there as if he doesn't want Eames to see his naked flesh even now, after countless nights like this. Eames wonders if it's because Arthur doesn't trust him, or because he doesn't trust himself.

He never gets an answer.

Only twice does Eames leave first and when they next meet – on a job, in the street, by happenstance and choice – Arthur has plainly been unhappy with him. Which makes Eames think that however fucked up this is, it's fucked up just the right amount, and he shows Arthur just how sorry he is with every trick in his quite considerable arsenal.

Occasionally they both stay, legs and arms entwined. Too exhausted to move. Too content to ruin the moment. They both sleep fitfully, not sure if the other will be there in the morning when they wake.

One of them always wakes alone.

There are never other people, though neither of them has ever asked, and neither of them will ever volunteer the information.

Arthur has a finely ingrained sense of right and wrong and even though he barely acknowledges what he's doing to himself, it wouldn’t feel right to let someone else take him apart as thoroughly as he lets Eames. Eames on the other hand continues to flirt with everything regardless of gender. (It's not just part of his job, it's part of who he is and he couldn't stop it now even if Arthur asked. Which he wouldn't. Sometimes he knows Eames better than Eames knows himself. Sometimes he knows nothing at all). But Eames has very strict rules about how close he ever let's anyone get. There are a few people he considers friends (Team Inception as Yusuf dubbed them would be one select group) and there was once someone who meant a lot to him, maybe even as much as Arthur. But he cocked it up too badly for him to want to revisit that anytime soon.

He'll eventually tell Arthur the whole sordid tale. And Arthur won't judge but won't have any reference in his own experience either. Eames will find it strangely endearing.

There are jobs so simple they sometimes wonder why they bother. There are jobs so complex that the thrill they get is better than sex. There are jobs so heart-wrenching that they don't go back under for months.

But they always do in the end. The dreamscape is as much a part of their reality as the world where their totem's are the only things keeping them grounded.

They never plan which night it will be. Or if it will even happen. Sometimes they do a job together and part without exchanging a single touch. Those are the nights they both disappear to their favourite hidey holes, touch themselves with no finesse, just a desperate need for completion and an ache that they can never relieve.

Those days they go out, they get drunk, they see the few friends they still have left, they go for long walks, they visit with their families, they talk themselves into and out of so many things they lose count. Even Arthur.

They can't go on like this. They both understand the rules, those unwritten ones it's taken them years to decipher, to piece together from body language alone. But they can't seem to stop.

Until one night Arthur sighs and Eames knows this is it, this is the day that everything changes.

“I don't have anywhere to be until Tuesday,” he says. Eames frowns. Today is Saturday. “So unless you need me to leave...”

Arthur's voice drifts off and he doesn't move, just keeps on looking at the ceiling, his breathing just about back to normal. And of course, Eames thinks as he slides closer to the other man, of course it would be Arthur that makes the first move. He's probably been preparing for this moment all this time, since the very beginning.

He'll never know for sure, but when he asks, years later, Arthur won't exactly deny it.

“I don't need you to leave,” Eames breathes against Arthur's ear and Arthur relaxes, more than he ever has in this bed, just one of many they've shared.

Arthur could probably tell him how many, but he'll never ask.

“Then I'll stay,” Arthur says. He turns to face Eames, brushes his fingertips lightly along the other man's jaw, pulls him into a kiss.

“And so will I,” Eames says.

And so they do. Until another morning dawns and the sunlight through the curtains wakes them up and there they are, exactly where they were the night before.

It's a novelty they both get used to.


End file.
